Film Courage: How has your screenwriting process evolved over the years?
John Gray, Writer, Director, Producer: it has pretty much stayed the same.
I get the idea I think about the idea. I don't start writing anything for a while. I just
sometimes I go oh that's I didn't think about that and then I'll find myself in the shower thinking
about it or walking down the street thinking about it I get another little idea. I get a lot of ideas
when I'm driving and listening to music. I get a lot of inspiration suddenly out of nowhere
like Oh wow that's the thing yes okay so then eventually when I think I have enough now to
actually put something on paper I'll open up a new document and I'll just if I have a title for it
if I don't to just be a new story and I'll write down whatever it is I've been thinking about just
kind of spitball it and then I'll start returning to that and just seeing how I can flesh that out
and ultimately try to get to a beginning middle and an end just in the broadest Strokes
just to work that out and then once I've got that then I try actually writing an outline so just
like a scene by scene outline of what happens next and what happens and and from the initial
page I already know kind of where the midpoint is and I know how I want it to end but I don't know
much else so those little beets help me and those are the most difficult things to do because you're
just pulling stuff out of the air just just making stuff up which is I'm complaining about it but
that's that's my job but it's the hardest part of it and you're just trying to build the story and
build the plot and build the characters just piece by piece and scene by scene and that that could
take me months to to to just keep working out and doing that and then once I've got the outline done
I'll try to put it aside for a while working something else for a week or so and then come
back to it a little bit fresh and I've had my wife read it and and get her feedback and then
then I just once I feel like I'm I've there's always this moment and maybe one thing has changed
over the years that I recognize it more clearly now but there's a moment in the outline where you
feel like okay I I'm ready for the script now I can't really spend any more time speculating about
what's going to happen with this in the outline I have to now go into this the script and write the
script and then that's a great exciting place to be and then I just start writing the script and I
follow the outline I you take left turns something else happens along the way you get a different
idea the character wants to do something else so you deviate from the outline but basically I try
to just go straight through that process and write that script from beginning to end and if I get a
different idea about something that I realize could be a profound idea for the script that's
going to mean you're working the whole First Act I'll just again open up another document and I'll
put that idea there and then go on and just keep writing as I get to the end for me and people
think oh you're so disciplined but I think it's actually because I'm not disciplined if I don't
impose this to just go through I'll just oh let me what I write last night that's no good I better
rewrite that oh maybe it's something better at the beginning and before it you just got this jumble
you don't know what it is anymore and and that's exactly what I would do if I didn't force myself
to go all the way through and and just because it works for me doesn't mean it work for everybody
else people have different ways of writing some people depend on rewriting as they go they can't
do any other way they've got to look at what they did yesterday rewrite that get that perfect as
perfect as they can and that's absolutely valid it works for them but that wouldn't work for me
we talked about Stephen King in the previous segment maybe do you have an imaginary reader
that you write for he talked about that and on writing so people are writing for someone
that's been dead for 15 years and others a harsh High school teacher and it's usually my wife
Melissa okay I want her to be impressed yeah so I really write with the idea often of she'll love
this she'll be impressed she'll think I'm really smart because I've written this and it's helpful
it's yeah and then it's just discouraging when I realize I failed but she doesn't always react
that way to everything I write but I learned from that and and go on to make it better and is there
a particular style of music you listen to you said while you're driving you you come up with
great oh well when I'm driving I love to listen to anything I sing and I just make a complete
fool of myself and we have a convertible so it's even worse everyone can see me there are kids
pointing at me as they drive away but I love it I sing I just get very involved in the music and I
love the music mostly of my era I love 70s music and and I love the classics from the 50s and 60s
and Rolling Stones and Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen who still is a force today of course
I and just I love just emotional kind of stuff that I can get feelings out when I'm writing I
listen to music also but I listen to attention to film scores and lyrics because that would
distract me but that's enormously helpful to listen to music as I write is and I've got an
enormous collection of scores that I listen to so Lou Reed driving down the street and then and then
how does a writer create conflict oh well that's a great question and it's an important one because
that is really the central thing about drama I think is conflict it doesn't have to be
people in major fisticuffs okay I mean Catholic just be anything where someone disagrees with
you a scene where two characters agree on everything is no one else to watch that so
it is important I think oh even in the most innocuous seeming scene
to have some sort of conflict which is what I want is at odds with what you want and how we're going
to resolve that and again I always just draw on my personal stuff or things that drive me crazy
if it's not something overtly obvious from the story this is a bad guy here's a villain
we know what that conflict is but just when two characters in the scene and it could be it's just
something as simple as as the way to eat something differently one thing that annoys the other person
you crunch so loud against it just a little things in life and then we talked before specificity
that maybe people feel like I recognize that yes that's like my wife my husband does that so again
it's just about being observant and looking around you and and watching what people do and what
drives me crazy what is meaningful conflict and what isn't I think for it to be meaningful it has
to be true to who the people are it's got to be something that that comes from their personalities
something that comes from their needs as opposed to something I can't even think of an example but
if you sort of impose a false conflict on two people because you want them to fight or you
want them to be at odds with each other but if it's not something that's true to who they are
then the audience just they may know why they're disconnecting but they just sort of disconnect
doesn't feel real does it feel like this is this is germane to the relationship or who
these people are just feels false or can feel false if conflict were a graph let's say in a
screenplay would there be levels maybe small starting out but then almost like a roller
coaster absolutely anything in a screenplay has to have peaks and valleys it just can't be one
thing all the way through even if it's an action movie it can't be action all the time it has to
be a break cast comedy can't be just multiple last because you get numb to it after a while the oasis
gets numb and so I feel like you really have to balance it's a balancing act of we're going to
build up to this and then we're gonna we're gonna take a breath and come down and then build this
and and that's across all the the emotions really in the script what's your process for
discovering the emotional core of a story for me it's just really as simple as do I feel it is this
a story I want to tell because I feel something about it that it reverberates in me somewhere
but there's I mean there's really not a process per se that I use to come to that or determine
that or it's it's just about emotion and do I feel it or not it's kind of I mean luckily I
guess simple and so when you're writing dialogue do you come back in and do that separately do you
just kind of get the structure of the scene no I usually at the same time sometimes though I'll
because I love dialogue I love writing dialogue I love listening to these characters and and making
them really different from each other and how they but sometimes if I'm really on a roll with a scene
and I don't want to stop to think about a technical thing about where we are in the scene
or the characters moving are they sitting are they leaving I'll just write the dialogue like a play
I'll just go through the scene and finish the scene with the dialogue and then I'll go back
and and figure out where we are he's moving to here and we're making dinner whatever that is
so it doesn't seem like a play but sometimes dialogue I just it just goes and and I just
have to catch up with it and keep up with it and do you feel those care that's when
the characters are pushing back and they're there's taking a a life of their own a lot of
times in the car in the dialogue and in the behavior I'll suddenly I'll write something
for the character and it's like what doesn't sound right it's not it's not really true this doesn't
that sound like this character talking and I'll have to think about that I'll try again I'll try
a different word differently it's still not it's still fighting me now I have to think about okay
so maybe this character doesn't want to be saying this doesn't want to be doing this in the scene
so what's the opposite of it what maybe that's what we have to look at and the
same thing with behavior I'll have a character doing something that the reviews where they are
but it feels false it's not coming I can't get the idea and that's when I know I can't
force it I can't pry it in there I have to go back and try to figure out what's missing
is there and opposites are a great writing tool so what's the exact opposite of this
and and this is not always the answer but it helps you sometimes get to an answer.